Kona 3 or Blackmagic

[Brandon Kraemer]

I am a big fan of the Black-magic hardware and I am looking into building a FCP based finishing system for the RED workflow.

I contacted Blackmagic to see what card would be the best and their sales person said they could not help me. This seems strange since the cards work with FCP and its an open resolution system. I have heard that Kona 3 supports this workflow, but only hearsay.

Does anyone have a definitive explanation as to which card works with RED, or if the card even matters. All I need to do with the card it send a picture to a reference monitor and layoff masters to tape with this workflow.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Matthew Rogers]

I've got the DeckLink HD Extreme (older one that doesn't have the HDMI PCI card) It works fine with the RED considering that when you go out to tape you'd probably be in a different codec then REDCODE. Personally, if I had more money I would get the Kona LHe. It's basically the same as the Blackmagic card, but everything is hardware based and takes some stress off the computer.

Matthew

 

[Scott Simmons]

Plus AJA is supposed to come out with a new version of the drivers that has support for the odd RED frame size and an LUT ... showed it at NAB but I don't think they've released yet. Wonder when?

 

[Brandon Kraemer]

They told me 30 to 40 days out on the drivers.

 

[Kaku Ito]

I've been using Matrox MXO, MOTU V3HD, Decklink HD Extreme for editing "odd frame size" but they pretty much all work fine. I see some of them are not good with lowering the video quality (that ends up not displaying good on video monitor) but V3HD actually played in all quality fine. I mentioned this before that MXO can display REDCINE on HDSDI and HD component so me and Paul from Viceral Psyche are working with REDCINE/MXO/Sony Master Monitor to do telecine work and it's been really reliable. Many clients with Kona boards saw this solution and envied MXO for being able to reliably display REDCINE screen.

 

[Simon Blackledge]

same as using the 2nd monitor option in the BlackMagic Sys prefs really.

Whoever said they cant help you at BM contact them directly and report.. jesus.. cant help.. man.. lame!

We have one HD extreme.. older no hdmi like macville.. never had issues.

AJA people say have better build quality.. have both.. happy with both.

As for loading red footage into fcp and playing out realtime to tape.. theres more to it than your video i/o card affraid :-/

Si

 

[Noah Kadner]

Ted from Red used to be Ted from AJA. And their stuff has always been more high end(and expensive) than Black Magic. If you can afford it, I'd go AJA.

Noah

 

[Leo Ticheli]

Hi Noah,

More "high end" in what way?

Best regards,

Leo

 

[Mathew Mackereth]

.. it would be great to have some up to date info on this issue - I've been suggesting Kona 3 based systems for workflow based on the uptake of the forum members here (and the fact that they seem to use Kona at RED, ie, the Mythbusters segment) - but I've been using decklink since the very first model...

anyone completed an A/B comparison?

 

[Leo Ticheli]

Disclaimer: We have not performed exhaustive tests; however...

We see zero difference in picture output quality between AJA Kona 3 and Black Magic Decklink cards.

We've hammered on our Decklink card suites for years without a single failure of any kind.

Our Kona 3 card seems to be less user friendly than the Decklink cards. The sometimes touted down conversion feature is worthless.

The argument in favor of AJA is that both Apple and Red seem to have closer relationships with them.

If there are actually differences in quality or capability, I'd like to know them. The AJA cards are more expensive, but the difference in price is meaningless in a production environment. I like to know if there is an actual difference before I switch all my suites to AJA.

Lastly, it seem to me that Black Magic has really led the pack in bringing out innovative products at surprisingly low prices; not at all unlike what Red has done.

I'm not pushing one over the other, but would love to hear some actual facts...

Best regards,

Leo

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

We built Offhollywood from day zero 100% on AJA products.

We use Kona 3s, Zena cards, IoHDs, and an assortment of their converter boxes every day.

We swear by AJA. Come IBC - you will too.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

The quality out of our Blackmagic HD Extreme is great. I haven't put it head to head with an AJA, but I've found some aspects to be more user friendly than the AJA cards I've used. That said, I'm nowhere near as familiar with FCP as I am with Avid, so I can't really make an accurate assessment.

Nothing in our work with the BMD cards has caused us any concern, quality wise. We do have some issues, but I can't say whether they are FCP issues, or related to the card, or system or some other variable.

 

[Noah Kadner]

Didn't say they were night and day. We've installed lots of blackmagic and lots of AJA. If I had to pick one for my own system tomorrow, I'd probably go AJA. Do I have the scientific data to explain why, nope. Just overall experience of what has worked in the past.

Noah

 

[Leo Ticheli]

Noah, I certainly respect your knowledge and experience, but I believe we need something more than, "what has worked in the past." Are you saying your installs have experienced failures or problems with Black Magic cards?

I don't think anyone is saying Kona cards do not work; is it fair to say that Black Magic cards are of "lesser quality" with no evidence whatsoever?

I bought the Kona 3 because I feared that AJA's relationship with Apple/Red might result in some software change that would render the Black Magic cards unusable and I wanted at least one room up and running while we scrambled to get working cards.

So far, nothing like that has happened, at least not to my knowledge or experience.

Unless something like this does happen, paying more for an AJA card is throwing money away.

If someone out there can produce evidence that the AJA card is in fact superior for our use, I'd like to learn about it. Otherwise statements that one card is higher quality than the other are a bit of a stretch.

Finally, I'd like to say that having to keep opening the Kona control panel to manually change settings is getting to be a pain in the... whatever happened to auto-detect?

Best regards,

Leo

 

[Zach Hilton]

I'm also interested in any noticeable difference. We've been using AJA here but mostly because of its supposed better mac support. I'm leaning more toward BMD because it seems to promise the same as AJA but without the high price. We actually have been having an unresolvable issue with our kona lhe's. When playing prores back at 1080 23.98 the audio over time slips out of sync. Switch the sequence to uncompressed and it works just fine. The kona 3 doesnt seem to have this problem. Quite unnacceptable for production work in my mind.

 

[Poi Boy]

I'm using the decklink HD extreme; For $1K with hdmi monitoring, pretty sweet deal.
Aloha
-A

 

[M Most]

If someone out there can produce evidence that the AJA card is in fact superior for our use, I'd like to learn about it.

It's superior if you have to do any conversions between 720 and 1080 at 24fps (with no temporal interpolation) or vice versa, because that is something AJA can do and Blackmagic can't. You can also use the card as a pass-through up or downconverter, and as a downstream keyer in any format. If you have a need for any of these things, it's superior. If you don't, maybe it isn't.

 

[Leo Ticheli]

Hi Mike,

I haven't tried to go from 720 to 1080 with my Kona, and can't think of a reason that I would, but I'm sure individual needs vary.

As for the down conversion, I find the Kona unacceptable. Not necessarily a knock against AJA; I've found most down-converters to be unacceptable.

I've not used the downstream keyer; again, I have no need. Perhaps it's good.

A pal of mine reports that some of his clients have experienced failures and driver issues with Black Magic cards; I've never had a hint of a problem and I've been using various models of Black Magic gear for several years without a hint of a problem.

Best regards,

Leo

 

[Colin Hubick]

Kona3

Kona3

As for the down conversion, I find the Kona unacceptable. Not necessarily a knock against AJA; I've found most down-converters to be unacceptable.

I've not used the downstream keyer; again, I have no need. Perhaps it's good.

We use the Kona products here in our shop, and have no complaints about the downconversion that the Kona3 provides. I'm curious why you feel it's unacceptable? In fact right now, I running some HDCAM dubs of some RED footage we shot for a commercial job, and at the same time am doing a SD downconvert to a DVD recorder with time code burn on the DVDs. Our DVD recorder is being fed with SDI from the Kona, and the quality looks great. The RED footage is 2k (2:1) resolution 10bit 422, and works great with our systems.

As for the realtime keyer, we do use it quite extensively to do watermarks on some of the dubs that we send out to potential buyers, and again it works great.

ttyl
Colin

 

[Leo Ticheli]

Why do I feel the Kona 3 down converter is unacceptable?

Simply because the output looks like crap. Any straight lines are filled with buzzing aliasing. In layman's terms, it sucks.

Perhaps you footage is such that these deficiencies don't show, but I've personally found no scenes that were acceptably down converted with the Kona 3 card. Perhaps it's because you're shooting 2K.

I've been visually tortured many times by footage someone described as, "looks great." Obviously, opinions vary as do standards.

Best regards,

Leo